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Chateau Neuf du PEPNo one is able to claim creditfor the ancient wooden signthat hangs on the porch of theold Positron Electron Projectbuildings at the StanfordLinear Accelerator Center.The sign, proclaiming thearea “Chateau Neuf du PEP,” isa play on the wine they usedto drink there. Châteauneuf duPape is a wine appellation insouthern France, named forPope John XXII’s 14th centurysummer “new home.”“Those were quite differentdays,” says Perry Wilson, asenior scientist on PEP at thetime. During the ’70s, when thesign went up, PEP collaboratorswould gather every Friday forrefreshments, music, and dancing.Wilson played the gutbucket,a homemade bass. Châteauneufdu Pape, a thick, powerful redwine, was a favorite libation.Perhaps all that wine addledtheir memories. Regarding thesign, Wilson points a finger atFrancophile John Rees. ButRees, who was director of PEP,denies responsibility. Phil Morton,who was part of PEP’s designteam, said, “It sounds likesomething I might have done.I’d like to take credit for it but,I just don’t know.”The wine no longer flows,but the well-weathered signremains, an anonymous monumentto the tastes and humorof the old PEP gang.Amber DanceCaterpillar crawls toa high-energy rescueRyan Schultz and Kris Andersonhad a problem: how to inspecta window in a pipe that carriesa powerful particle beam, 40feet below ground and 100 feetdown a narrow tunnel.Their solution: a 15-foot-longcontraption that combines adigital camera, a toy Caterpillarexcavator, and a scaled-upversion of the periscope childrenuse to peer over the backsof sofas. It cost just $200, notbad for a tool that is key tothe well-being of a multi-milliondollarexperiment at FermiNational Accelerator Laboratoryin Illinois.Directed via a 100-footremote control cord, the brightyellow excavator rolled into thetunnel, bathed the window inLED light and trained a spottingtelescope on it. Watchingthrough a periscope inserted intoan access shaft, inspectors onthe surface snapped pictures.The photos came out perfect,and a video of the inspectionkept Schultz’s 5-year-oldson entertained for days.“He wanted RIC to go with hisother toy cars,” Schultz says. Asfor RIC, or Remote IlluminationCaterpillar, “he’s like a person,”Schultz says. “He had his ownidentity. There’s nothing complicatedabout him. He just doeshis job.”The window is in a decaypipe linking Fermilab’s MainInjector with NuMI, an experimentthat shoots a beam of neutrinosthrough the ground to adetector in Minnesota. It must beperiodically inspected for corrosionand other wear and tear.But since the pipe isencased in concrete, wirelessdevices won’t work, and the lowlevel of radiation in the tunnelfogs photos taken down there.So Schultz and his supervisor,engineer Kris Anderson,drew on a deep well of experience:hours spent drivingremote-controlled cars withtheir kids.Meanwhile, senior technicianKeith Anderson knew fromhis days working on US Armytanks that he could devise aperiscope to look into the tunnel.“It is mostly modeled after thechildren’s milk-bottle periscope,a box with two mirrors on it,”he says.In the end, Schultz jokes, oneof the most difficult parts of theproject was getting reimbursed:“Think about it. I submitted areceipt that says Toys ‘R’ Us.”Tona KunzPhoto: Reidar Hahn, Fermilabsymmetry | volume 05 | issue 01 | jan/feb 087